If you sold every share of every company in the U.S. and used the money to buy up all the factories, machines and inventory, you’d have some cash left over. That, in a nutshell, is the math behind a bear case on equities that says prices have outrun reality.

The concept is embodied in a measure known as the Q ratio developed by James Tobin, a Nobel Prize-winning economist at Yale University who died in 2002. According to Tobin’s Q, equities in the U.S. are valued about 10 percent above the cost of replacing their underlying assets — higher than any time other than the Internet bubble and the 1929 peak.

Valuation tools are being dusted off around Wall Street as investors assess the staying power of the bull market that is now the second longest in 60 years. To Andrew Smithers, the 77-year-old former head of SG Warburg’s investment arm, the Q ratio is an indicator whose time has come because it illuminates distortions caused by quantitative easing.

“QE is a very dangerous policy, in my view, because it has pushed asset prices up and high asset prices, we know from history, are very dangerous,” Smithers, founder of Smithers & Co. in London, said in a phone interview. “It is very strongly indicated by reliable measures that we’re looking at a stock market which is something like 80 percent over-priced.”

Dissenting Views

Acceptance of Tobin’s theory is at best uneven, with investors such as Laszlo Birinyi saying the ratio is useless as a signal because it would have kept you out of a bull market that has added $17 trillion to share values. Others see its meaning debased in an economy whose reliance on manufacturing is nothing like it used to be.

Futures on the S&P 500 expiring next month slipped 0.1 percent at 9:36 a.m. in London.

To Smithers, the ratio’s doubling since 2009 to 1.10 is a symptom of companies diverting money from their businesses to the stock market, choosing buybacks over capital spending. Six years of zero-percent interest rates have similarly driven investors into riskier things like equities, elevating the paper value of assets over their tangible worth, he said.

Standard & Poor’s 500 Index members last year spent about 95 percent of their profits on buybacks and dividends, with stock repurchases exceeding $2 trillion since 2009, data compiled by S&P Dow Jones Indices show.

In the first four months of this year, almost $400 billion of buybacks were announced, with February, March and April ranking as three of the four busiest months ever, according to data compiled by Birinyi Associates Inc.

Slow Spending

Spending by companies on plants and equipment is lagging behind. While capital investment also rose to a record in 2014, its growth was 11 percent over the last two years, versus 45 percent in buybacks, data compiled by Barclays Plc show.

With equity prices surging and investment growth failing to keep pace, the Q ratio has risen to 58 percent above its average of 0.70 since 1900, according to data compiled by Birinyi and the Federal Reserve on market and asset values for non-financial companies. Readings above 1 are considered by some to be too high and the ratio has exceeded that threshold only 12 percent of the time, mostly between 1995 to 2001.

That’s nothing to be alarmed about because the American economy has become more oriented around services than manufacturing, according to George Pearkes, an analyst at Harrison, New York-based Bespoke Investment Group LLC. Nowadays, companies like Apple Inc. and Facebook Inc. dominate growth, while decades ago, it was railroads and steelmakers, which rely heavily on capital.

Mean Reversion

“Does that necessarily mean that the Q ratio should be as high as it is right now? I don’t know,” Pearkes said by phone. “With those sorts of long-term indicators, they can sometimes mean that the market is overvalued. But the reversion to the mean on them is usually going to take a lot longer than most people’s time frame.”

Any investors who based their investment decisions on the Q ratio would have missed most of the rally since 2009, according to Jeffrey Yale Rubin, director of research at Birinyi’s firm. The measure rose above its historic mean three months into this bull market and since then, the S&P 500 has climbed 131 percent.

“The issue we have with Tobin Q is that it does a very poor job at timing the market,” Rubin said from Westport, Connecticut. “The followers of Tobin Q never told us to buy in 2009, yet now we are warned that we should sell. Our response is sell what? We were never told to buy.”

Bond Yields

Everyone from Janet Yellen to Warren Buffett has spoken cautiously on stock valuations in the past month. Both the Fed chair and chief executive officer of Berkshire Hathaway Inc. said prices are at risk of getting stretched should bond yields increase. The rate on 10-year Treasuries slipped last week to 2.14 percent while the S&P 500 gained 0.3 percent.

“It’s probably a sensible configuration for the stock market to be overvalued because competing investments are so poor,” Robert Brusca, president of Fact & Opinion Economics in New York, said by phone. “As an investor, you’re not just looking at the value of the firm, but the value of the firm relative to other things you can do with your money.”

At 2,260 days, the bull market that began in March 2009 this month exceeded the 1974-1980 rally as the second longest since 1956. While measures such as price-to-earnings ratios are holding just above historical averages, the bull market’s duration is sowing anxiety among professionals who watched the previous two end in catastrophe.

“We’re still close enough to that prior experience and that hold-over effect is still there,” Chris Bouffard, chief investment officer who oversees more than $10 billion at Mutual Fund Store in Overland Park, Kansas, said by phone. “When you start to see prior cycle peaks on the chart like Tobin Q and any other valuation metrics that people are putting up there, it looks dramatic, stark and scary.”

U.S. stocks climbed, sending the Standard & Poor’s 500 Index above a closing record, as investors speculated the Federal Reserve will continue to support the economy as central bankers meet in Jackson Hole.

The S&P 500 added 0.1 percent to 1,988.94 at 9:34 a.m. in New York, above a closing high of 1,987.98 reached July 24.

“Markets are looking for some indication from Yellen as to what happens once quantitative easing stops,” Peter Dixon, a global equities economist at Commerzbank AG in London, said by phone. “I suspect she’ll say that it depends on the data. The U.S. economy is in reasonable shape. The task for central banks, and Yellen is at the forefront, is how to wean markets away from almost unlimited liquidity provisions when the economy is recovering but remains fragile.”

The S&P 500 rose 0.3 percent yesterday, closing within two points of a record. The benchmark index has rebounded 4 percent from a three-month low on Aug. 7 as investors speculated central banks will keep interest rates low even as the economy shows signs of recovery.

Fed Minutes

Minutes to the central banks’ July meeting released yesterday showed that officials raised the possibility that aggressive stimulus will end sooner than anticipated, even as they acknowledged persistent slack in the labor market. The central bank will probably wind up its asset-purchase program at its October meeting, according to a Bloomberg survey of economists.

Data today showed fewer Americans than forecast applied for unemployment benefits last week. Yellen has highlighted uneven progress in the labor market in making the case for further accommodation.

The Fed minutes showed “many participants” still see “a larger gap between current labor market conditions and those consistent with their assessments of normal levels of labor utilization.” At the same time, “many members” noted that the “characterization of labor market underutilization might have to change before long,” particularly if the job market makes faster-than-anticipated progress, the minutes also said.

Jackson Hole

Fed Chair Janet Yellen will speak tomorrow at the Fed Bank of Kansas City’s economic symposium that starts today in Jackson Hole, Wyoming. European Central Bank President Mario Draghi will also speak.

The S&P 500 has almost tripled since its March 2009 low, helped by three rounds of Fed stimulus, coupled with better-than-projected corporate earnings. The gauge has not had a decline of 10 percent in almost three years. It trades at 17.8 times the reported earnings of its companies, near the highest level since 2010.

Soft Touch

Investors are betting that a soft touch on monetary policy will continue to suppress stock volatility, pouring a record stretch of cash into an exchange-traded note that rallies as calm returns to equities. The Chicago Board Options Exchange Volatility Index, the gauge known as the VIX (VIX), has lost 31 percent this month, closing at its lowest level since July 23.

Among other economic reports today, data at 9:45 a.m. may show a preliminary gauge of manufacturing slipped to 55.7 this month from 55.8 in July. Another report may indicate existing-home sales expanded at a slower pace in July while the Conference Board’s index of leading indicators, a measure of the outlook for the next three to six months, rose 0.6 percent in July, economists forecast.

this holiday season, even as it plays down its concerns over shoppers browsing gadgets in stores only to buy them for less online. Best Buy said it wants to turn more shoppers into actual buyers.

The electronics chain also is preparing to offer free home delivery on merchandise that is out of stock in stores, according to a person familiar with the matter, in spite of recent remarks by new CEO Hubert Joly that “showrooming” by consumers has been blown out of proportion. The electronics retailer says it is taking these steps to improve the percentage of people who walk into their stores and leave with a purchase, which is about 40% of shoppers.

The Journal noted that Best Buy’s seemingly contradictory stance underscores the conundrum facing executives at many big-box chains. Aware that they need to adapt aging business models to the realities of mobile- and computer-aided shopping, they don’t want to overreact or lose sight of what made them successful – namely, selection and service.

What’s your crystal ball saying these days?
As you peer into the mist, do you see European Central Bank (ECB) President Mario Draghi standing idly by as the eurozone crumbles, dragging the global economy into a new recession? Do you see fourth-quarter earnings growth at S&P 500 companies faltering and missing current projections for a
robust 10.5% year-on-year gain?

DAVOS/SWITZERLAND, 29JAN10 – Jean-Claude Trichet, President, European Central Bank, Frankfurt, speaks during the session ‘Rethinking Government Assistance’ in the Congress Centre of the Annual Meeting 2010 of the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, January 29, 2010. Copyright by World Economic Forum. swiss-image.ch/Photo by Remy Steinegger. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Can you glimpse an image of the U.S. economy driving obliviously over the “fiscal cliff” as partisan bickering in Congress grows even worse?
What about persistently high U.S. unemployment and a still weak housing market sapping consumer confidence?
If this is the regularly scheduled programming now being shown on your stock market predicting mechanism of choice, it may be time for an upgrade to a high definition model.

Far from buckling under the pressure of the global economy’s myriad roblems, however, the stock market has been rallying lately and is now within sight of the post recession high set back in April, when a series of strong employment report suggested (at least temporarily) that the U.S. economy was
rapidly gaining strength.
“While fundamentals can’t be ignored” says Sam Stovall, S&P Capital IQ’s chief investment strategist, pointing to the consensus projection for a less-than-inspiring 0.85% gain in second quarter S&P 500 earnings per share and a downright worrisome 1.5% decline for in the third quarter, “Wall Street
may be baking in an economic and earnings per share recovery a year or so from now.”

TORONTO, Aug. 10, 2012 /CNW/ – S&P Canadian Index Services announces the results of the semi-annual review of the S&P/TSX Venture 30 Index effective after the close of trading on Friday, August 17, 2012.

Shares of Tiffany & Co. have fallen roughly 20% since last summer, in contrast to most luxury retailers due to macro concerns, reduced guidance and disappointing holiday sales.

A Barron’s article published over the weekend says the company “still has plenty of polish.” The article notes that the company’s recent stumbles are the result of a bad bonus season on Wall Street and aggressive promotions by other jewellery chains as opposed to a fundamental issue. If the U.S. economy improves and Tiffany continues its store expansion,

Barron’s believes shares could regain their lustre. It opened 18 new stores from October 2010 to October 2011 and has plans to increase its European presence by 56% over the next five years.

Domestically, management hopes to see its store count rise to 150 stores from its current level of 87.An analyst interviewed for the article said, “If you look around the world, the environment is getting better for Tiffany.

Compared with six months ago, the world’s economies, by almost every measure, have gotten stronger and that bodes well for consumer spending.” He goes on to point to a strong correlation between the performance of the S&P 500 and Tiffany shares, which he expects to continue in 2012.

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